Spore!
09-11-08, 12:59 PM
#151
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This game is getting lambasted in the Amazon.com reviews.
Okay, I finished up the Civ stage last night. Once I managed to build an overwelming force of fighterplanes, and tiny religion blimps, it was painfully easy to just hop from one city to the next coverting the heathens against only half-hearted resistance. This is on Normal level. I wish it had been a bit more challenging gamewise, though to be fair, I've used pretty much the same strategy in every other RTS I've ever played. Still, slightly smarter AI would be appreciated. This section just screams out for multiplayer.
So now I'm in space, and man talk about information overload. So much to keep track of! At this point I'm tempted to go pick up the strategy guide just to help memorize what button does what. Still fun though.
So apart from the combat AI, I only have minor complaints about the game. Building can be awkward at times since there are some shapes that just refuse to be placed where I want them. For example, I'm finding it pretty much impossible to center a small piece on the end of a tube. And for some reason most of the outside content I'm getting is from Maxis with only the ocassional player made creature or building. I'm logged in, so I wonder if I'm missing a step somewhere.
So as you can see, minor gripes at best, that could probably be fixed with a simple patch.
09-11-08, 09:53 PM
#152
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Wow. Even when you dismiss the DRM complaints, a lot of reviews I've read have been kind of lukewarm.
But you guys seem to be really enjoying it. Now I'm tempted again.
But you guys seem to be really enjoying it. Now I'm tempted again.
09-11-08, 10:22 PM
#153
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Well theres something like 10 million more creatures and vehicles uploaded to the Sporepedia since I got the game on monday. Apparently a few people haven't gotten the "OMG, SPORE IS THE DEBIL!" memo. 
Ugh, well my first shot at the space level was a bust. I ran into that most hated of strategy game features, the alien rave who just wants me dead. It's hard to concentrate on the playing when you have to race home and stop an invasion every few minutes. I'm just gonna have to go back and restart the level.
At least the dogfighting part of the game is action packed. By coincidence my my little Bird of Prey explorer is at war with the race that uses little Federation starships.
Ugh, well my first shot at the space level was a bust. I ran into that most hated of strategy game features, the alien rave who just wants me dead. It's hard to concentrate on the playing when you have to race home and stop an invasion every few minutes. I'm just gonna have to go back and restart the level.
At least the dogfighting part of the game is action packed. By coincidence my my little Bird of Prey explorer is at war with the race that uses little Federation starships.
Last edited by Panda Phil; 09-14-08 at 02:55 PM.
09-13-08, 01:25 AM
#154
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All bad DRM ends up doing is punishing those who actually pay for the software. The people who pirate it will always be able to do so and couldn't care less about DRM. Most of the "crackers" get a kick out of cracking the encryption and DRM, then move on. It's fun for them.
And on top of all that, the DRM implementation on Spore is very similar to the "root-kit" fiasco with Sony, a few years back. Even if you uninstall Spore, the DRM software stays behind and there isn't any easy way to remove it.
So how is paying $50 for the pleasure of dealing with all of this BS acceptable?
09-13-08, 10:33 AM
#155
DVD Talk Hero
That's the whole point. DRM has been implemented on computer games and other software since the early-80s. The good kind is seamless. The bad kind is just bad. They all do their job just fine of curbing casual copying but hard-core pirates will always, ALWAYS find a way around it. The final version of Spore was available online days before the official release, and that version has NO DRM.
All bad DRM ends up doing is punishing those who actually pay for the software. The people who pirate it will always be able to do so and couldn't care less about DRM. Most of the "crackers" get a kick out of cracking the encryption and DRM, then move on. It's fun for them.
And on top of all that, the DRM implementation on Spore is very similar to the "root-kit" fiasco with Sony, a few years back. Even if you uninstall Spore, the DRM software stays behind and there isn't any easy way to remove it.
So how is paying $50 for the pleasure of dealing with all of this BS acceptable?
All bad DRM ends up doing is punishing those who actually pay for the software. The people who pirate it will always be able to do so and couldn't care less about DRM. Most of the "crackers" get a kick out of cracking the encryption and DRM, then move on. It's fun for them.
And on top of all that, the DRM implementation on Spore is very similar to the "root-kit" fiasco with Sony, a few years back. Even if you uninstall Spore, the DRM software stays behind and there isn't any easy way to remove it.
So how is paying $50 for the pleasure of dealing with all of this BS acceptable?
09-13-08, 01:54 PM
#156
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
If that were the case, then why can you call to enable more installs once you reach your limit? It's not a sales model, it's another method to curb casual copying by limiting the number of computers it can be installed on.
09-13-08, 02:05 PM
#157
DVD Talk Hero
And there's nothing that says they have to grant more installs or that they won't charge you for that in the future. I don't think people will go for it, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't like to try.
09-13-08, 02:25 PM
#158
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Picked this game up the other day and its amazing. Very addictive. Time flies by, You start playing then next thing you know its 3 hours later. Game is simple, but I just became a tribe and its starting to get more complicated and more like a RTS. The Creation stuff is amazing. it makes the game more additive. I love seeing your guy evolve.
I wouldn't listen to any of those reviews on amazon. Its a pretty awesome game,very fun. lots of humor too, any fans of 2001: a Space Odyssey will really enjoy the cut scene when your creature evolves into a tribe.
Great game, spent probably six hours playing so far.
I wouldn't listen to any of those reviews on amazon. Its a pretty awesome game,very fun. lots of humor too, any fans of 2001: a Space Odyssey will really enjoy the cut scene when your creature evolves into a tribe.
Great game, spent probably six hours playing so far.
09-14-08, 11:20 AM
#159
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
This makes me smile.
http://torrentfreak.com/spore-most-p...to-drm-080913/
Spore: Most Pirated Game Ever Thanks to DRM
Spore was without doubt the most anticipated game of the year. The game itself has blown away the people who have played it, but the DRM encouraged thousands to get their copy illegally. Already Spore has been downloaded more than 500,000 times on BitTorrent, and this number is increasing rapidly.
Most critics agree that Spore is a great game. However, the users aren’t too happy with the absurd DRM restrictions that come with the game. EA decided that people who buy a legitimate copy of the game, are only allowed to install it three times.
The idea behind DRM is that it will stop people from pirating the game, but in reality, it often has the opposite effect. As Forbes points out, many commenters on various BitTorrent sites now legitimize downloading this game because the official copies include some heavy and intrusive DRM.
“You have the power to make this the most pirated game ever, to give corporate bastards a virtual punch in the face,” deathkitten writes in a comment on The Pirate Bay. He or she is spot on. Spore has been the most downloaded torrent on The Pirate Bay for over a week, which is unique for a game.
Since September 2nd when Spore first appeared on BitTorrent, it has been downloaded a little over 500,000 times across various BitTorrent sites according to our most recent statistics. This download rate exceeds that of any other pirated game in history, and in a week or two from now it will be the most pirated game ever on BitTorrent.
As a comparison, Crysis, one of the best-selling PC games of this year has only been downloaded 420,000 times since it was released in November 2007. The Sims 2 currently holds the record for the most pirate downloads. There are no accurate stats for this game, since it was released long before we started tracking downloads, but we estimate that approximately 1 million copies have been downloaded.
Of course the record breaking number of Spore downloads can’t be attributed solely to DRM, but it sure helped. That’s not all, it also contributed to making Spore one of the worst rated games on Amazon. Out of the 2,219 reviews, 2,018 awarded the game with just 1 star, all because of the strict DRM.
DRM doesn’t stop people from pirating a game, on the contrary. It only hurts legitimate customers since the DRM is removed from the pirate version. The same is true for music, movies and books. Let’s hope EA and other media moguls will learn their lesson.
Spore was without doubt the most anticipated game of the year. The game itself has blown away the people who have played it, but the DRM encouraged thousands to get their copy illegally. Already Spore has been downloaded more than 500,000 times on BitTorrent, and this number is increasing rapidly.
Most critics agree that Spore is a great game. However, the users aren’t too happy with the absurd DRM restrictions that come with the game. EA decided that people who buy a legitimate copy of the game, are only allowed to install it three times.
The idea behind DRM is that it will stop people from pirating the game, but in reality, it often has the opposite effect. As Forbes points out, many commenters on various BitTorrent sites now legitimize downloading this game because the official copies include some heavy and intrusive DRM.
“You have the power to make this the most pirated game ever, to give corporate bastards a virtual punch in the face,” deathkitten writes in a comment on The Pirate Bay. He or she is spot on. Spore has been the most downloaded torrent on The Pirate Bay for over a week, which is unique for a game.
Since September 2nd when Spore first appeared on BitTorrent, it has been downloaded a little over 500,000 times across various BitTorrent sites according to our most recent statistics. This download rate exceeds that of any other pirated game in history, and in a week or two from now it will be the most pirated game ever on BitTorrent.
As a comparison, Crysis, one of the best-selling PC games of this year has only been downloaded 420,000 times since it was released in November 2007. The Sims 2 currently holds the record for the most pirate downloads. There are no accurate stats for this game, since it was released long before we started tracking downloads, but we estimate that approximately 1 million copies have been downloaded.
Of course the record breaking number of Spore downloads can’t be attributed solely to DRM, but it sure helped. That’s not all, it also contributed to making Spore one of the worst rated games on Amazon. Out of the 2,219 reviews, 2,018 awarded the game with just 1 star, all because of the strict DRM.
DRM doesn’t stop people from pirating a game, on the contrary. It only hurts legitimate customers since the DRM is removed from the pirate version. The same is true for music, movies and books. Let’s hope EA and other media moguls will learn their lesson.
09-18-08, 10:50 PM
#161
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Haven't been playing much the past few days thanks to real life getting in the way. But I still find myself coming back in the evening to spend an hour or so building new vehicles.
Looks like the first patch came out today. Haven't tried it out yet, but it looks like they took care of quite a few problems.
Looks like the first patch came out today. Haven't tried it out yet, but it looks like they took care of quite a few problems.
The focus of this patch is to fix some bugs that have been reported and to respond to feedback we've been seeing from the community about tuning and stability. We managed to squeak in a few fun things too; there's a cool cheat that allows you to turn your creature into a blocky representation of themselves, a new "inspection" feature for the creature creator to browse the parts stats that you have applied to your creature, and the much-requested "evoadvantage" cheat - you'll now be able to start a new creature game with a more evolved creature of your choice!
To get the patch, launch the EA Download Manager to download and install it. If you didn't install the EADM when you installed Spore, you can get it from http://files.ea.com/downloads/eacore/eadm-installer.exe.
This is a PC only patch. Mac users should check back soon!
Features
New Cheat: "evoadvantage". Enter this cheat when are starting a new Creature game to choose any creature from the Sporepedia. Start a new game with one of your more evolved creatures!
Display part statistics when you are in Build mode. Rollover any part and hold down the 'i' key.
New Cheat: "blocksmode". Turns creatures into their blocky representations.
More style filters. Open the cheat window and type: "stylefilter -microscope" or "stylefilter -norainbows" or "stylefilter -nextgen" to see the new styles
Added 70 new planet scripts with a low terraform score, especially of the "hot and high atmosphere" type
Graphics/Aesthetics
Animation improvements
Improved the planets fogging, blooming and lighting
Fixed animation issues with tool handling, hand walking and some of the more oddly shaped creatures
Tuning
Creature phase: Improved the pacing towards the end of the game, and increased the challenge in Normal and Hard modes.
Tribe phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
Civilization phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
Space phase: Made Empires in Easy and Normal modes demand reasonable amounts of money in exchange for peace and adjust the level of punishment if the player doesn't pay
Space phase: Made disasters less likely to occur in Easy and Normal modes and increased the time between each attack from the enemy empire when the player is at war.
Miscellaneous
Creature phase: Improved the way posse members behave during threatening situations and fights.
Space phase: Made finding your home world and colonies easier in the Galactic view.
Tribe phase: Made it so that tribe members can travel on steep hills if they need to do so now, but their speed will be reduced a lot.
Fixed an issue with attacks not working on some bigger animals and larger animals not dying correctly
Fixed collect mission not completing correctly when all parts have been collected
Fixed problems with the "Rolling Thunder" and "Déjà Vu" achievements not being awarded as they should
Fixed floating parts not being deducted from the budget when loaded into creator
Fixed an issue with the rotation rings not resizing correctly when a part was resized and improved their look
Fixed an issue where the terraforming score of planet could differ when revisiting a solar system
Fixed the keyboard controls for zoom & pitch in the Colony Planner not working properly
Fixed a crash that could occur when watching an epic creature attack a city
Fixed some issues where the game would freeze when using the Creature Tweaker tool or when capturing a planet in solar view
Fixed an issue where not all tribe members would obey the raid order when a large group was ordered to raid
Fixed an issue where banning a creation from one of your other saved games would black out the main menu
To get the patch, launch the EA Download Manager to download and install it. If you didn't install the EADM when you installed Spore, you can get it from http://files.ea.com/downloads/eacore/eadm-installer.exe.
This is a PC only patch. Mac users should check back soon!
Features
New Cheat: "evoadvantage". Enter this cheat when are starting a new Creature game to choose any creature from the Sporepedia. Start a new game with one of your more evolved creatures!
Display part statistics when you are in Build mode. Rollover any part and hold down the 'i' key.
New Cheat: "blocksmode". Turns creatures into their blocky representations.
More style filters. Open the cheat window and type: "stylefilter -microscope" or "stylefilter -norainbows" or "stylefilter -nextgen" to see the new styles
Added 70 new planet scripts with a low terraform score, especially of the "hot and high atmosphere" type
Graphics/Aesthetics
Animation improvements
Improved the planets fogging, blooming and lighting
Fixed animation issues with tool handling, hand walking and some of the more oddly shaped creatures
Tuning
Creature phase: Improved the pacing towards the end of the game, and increased the challenge in Normal and Hard modes.
Tribe phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
Civilization phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
Space phase: Made Empires in Easy and Normal modes demand reasonable amounts of money in exchange for peace and adjust the level of punishment if the player doesn't pay
Space phase: Made disasters less likely to occur in Easy and Normal modes and increased the time between each attack from the enemy empire when the player is at war.
Miscellaneous
Creature phase: Improved the way posse members behave during threatening situations and fights.
Space phase: Made finding your home world and colonies easier in the Galactic view.
Tribe phase: Made it so that tribe members can travel on steep hills if they need to do so now, but their speed will be reduced a lot.
Fixed an issue with attacks not working on some bigger animals and larger animals not dying correctly
Fixed collect mission not completing correctly when all parts have been collected
Fixed problems with the "Rolling Thunder" and "Déjà Vu" achievements not being awarded as they should
Fixed floating parts not being deducted from the budget when loaded into creator
Fixed an issue with the rotation rings not resizing correctly when a part was resized and improved their look
Fixed an issue where the terraforming score of planet could differ when revisiting a solar system
Fixed the keyboard controls for zoom & pitch in the Colony Planner not working properly
Fixed a crash that could occur when watching an epic creature attack a city
Fixed some issues where the game would freeze when using the Creature Tweaker tool or when capturing a planet in solar view
Fixed an issue where not all tribe members would obey the raid order when a large group was ordered to raid
Fixed an issue where banning a creation from one of your other saved games would black out the main menu
09-19-08, 07:05 AM
#163
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Why I'm shocked! SHOCKED I tell you!
